A variety of computer hardware and software travel planning aids are currently available on the market primarily for vacation and recreational travel planning. A number of the travel guide software packages focus on National Parks of the United States or recreational tours and activities with prepared travelogs or prepared assemblages of multimedia travel information on the different recreational geographical locations or recreational activities. Such travel software programs are exemplified for example by the America NavigaTour .TM. MediAlive .TM. multimedia travel guide produced by CD Technology, Inc.; the Great Vacations .TM. Family Travel Guide by Positive Software Solutions; the Adventures .TM. CDROM Program for worldwide adventure travel by Deep River Publishing, Inc.; and National Parks of America, a CDROM product of Multicom Publishing, Inc. which contains a directory of all National Parks in the United States.
Rand McNally produces a software travel planning product under the trademark TRIPMAKER .TM. for planning a trip by car in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The Rand McNally Tripmaker .TM. software also calculates quickest, shortest, and preferred scenic routes for the trip planner. While the Rand McNally product incorporates a database of many points of interest, the multimedia travelog information appears limited to preplanned scenic tours.
Similarly the American Automobile Association in cooperation with Compton's NewMedia also provides travel planning from starting point to destination point with stopping points in between. The CDROM product contains a database of travel information. However the multimedia information available from the database appears limited to "suggested routes of travel" again limiting user choice.
In each case it appears that travel information from multimedia sources is preassembled by editors so that the user or trip planner is limited to "canned" or prepared multimedia travelogs of prescribed, suggested, or preplanned tours. Or the user is limited to information fragments about this or that particular object of interest or this or that particular place. There is no opportunity or user capability and selectivity in constructing a user customized travelog of assembled multimedia information for previewing a particular user determined route of travel. The user is relegated to travelogs and multimedia assemblages prepared for routes and tours proposed by other editors.